


Los Angeles When It Sizzles

by Ayankun



Category: La La Land (2016)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M, mid-move schmaltz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayankun/pseuds/Ayankun
Summary: Summertime and the livin’ is easy.





	

His sweaty palm squeaks on the knob when he grips it, the metal warm to the touch even in the false-twilight of his apartment, the windows thrown wide and the curtains shut tight.  Sebastian opens his front door without bothering with the peephole, mildly curious and vaguely alarmed and slightly annoyed:  not too many people have this address, could be somebody coming to collect on a debt, and they've woken him from a joyless midday nap to do it.

He doesn't catch who it is at first because he's squinting against the hyper-fluorescent LA sun and yawning like a lion.  Eyes watering, he blinks the sleep away and giddily comes to realize that the vision before him is anything but a dream.

Sebastian leans his head against the cracking paint of his door and smiles, stepping back to allow Mia room to enter.

That's all the invitation she needs.  "Before you say anything," she starts, whisking her way through the kitchen to the shadowed corner that is his dining nook, "These coffees were iced when I left work, I promise."

Sebastian quietly closes the door after her, meanders across the bare living room floor towards the sound of her voice.  She meets him on the far side by putting a sweating plastic cup into his hand, its contents murky and ice-less.  He looks at it and then back to her, but she's turning away, shrugging her clutch off her shoulder and onto his table; taking her hair down and then incomprehensibly putting it up again; talking all the while at a mile a minute, the endearing whisper of her lisp stronger than he's ever heard itl.

"I thought, he goes five miles out of his way for samba/tapas coffee, so,  _ first _ , he drinks coffee.  Second, this time of day, traffic's not usually that bad, right?  It  _ can be _ , but it's not  _ normally _ , you know,  _ awful _ , but lucky me, there was an accident on the 134, of  _ course _ , so I sat there staring at the Universal building for like, twenty solid minutes, I mean at a dead stop."  She winces, "That's an unfortunate choice of words because actually I think somebody might have died?  I'm not sure.  The one car was pretty much  _ under  _ another car, it was sort of impressive, really.  Impressive and really, really unfortunate and horrible.  Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, it's at least a million degrees out there.  So.  That was my hour in hell."

Lip bitten and eyes wide with comical frustration, Mia's head shakes with minute, manic twitches like a Small World puppet with a haywire servo in its neck.  Reflexively, she swipes her own cup off his counter where she'd left it to puddle a ring onto the formica, taking a drag off the straw with habitual ease.  Her face scrunches, contorts, her shoulders rising against an invisible foe.

"That's -- disgusting, don't even--" she says, trying not to choke on a mouthful of watery, lukewarm coffee.  "Here, give it."

She reaches for the cup he's still holding wordlessly, and wordlessly he gives it up.  Still shaking her head, Mia disappears into the thin kitchen with the de-iced coffees.  He hears the refrigerator open and close, its incandescence briefly sending shadows across the walls in the dim half-light.

"Digging the outfit, by the way," she calls from behind the wall, "Though I must admit it kinda makes a girl feel overdressed."

Sebastian glances down as if he's forgotten his own attire.  White A-shirt.  White shorts.  No holes, minimal stains.  When he looks back up, she's grinning at him from the dining nook, arms crossed over the sensible blouse she wears on the job.  What grin -- try  _ smirk _ .   


Off his blasé shrug, she tips her head back and her eyes narrow to conspiratorial slits.  "I bet you answer the door in your underwear for all the girls."

Sebastian scrubs a hand through his hair, a trivial concession to appearing presentable.  He changes the subject.  "I thought you worked last night?"

It's not a deflection but a welcome segue, and she visibly melts against the kitchen counter at the reminder of her never-ending toil.

"Arthur's boyfriend locked him out ("Again?" - Sebastian, incredulous) --  _ again _ , so they called me at, what, four-thirty to open."  Mia's face falls into a sideways, downward twist of regret and self-pity.  There's red in her eyes and black underneath.  "I've made it this far on nearly-lethal doses of caffeine."

Sebastian sighs, holds out his arms to her.   


"Mia, Mia,  _ Mia _ ."   


He meets her halfway, tucking her head into his shoulder, pressing a hand to the small of her back.  Her shirt's damp from the hour spent stewing in the driver's seat of her Prius, but his isn't in any better condition.  The last time he attempted to run the AC, it shorted half the units on the ground floor.

In fact, the comfort of the embrace is only bearable for so long in this stuffy heat.  Mia pulls back after a moment and he leans to kiss her forehead before she can get too far out of reach.  She compromises by turning to put herself at his side, her arm around his waist and his over her shoulder.

"Make yourself at home," he welcomes, sweeping his hand around at … the inexcusable mess of unpacked boxes and precariously stacked jazz memorabilia that haunts his living room.  He scratches at the scruff under his jaw, squinting at the clutter.  "I'm pretty sure there's a couch under there somewhere."

Mia's arm ghosts from around him, fingers digging into his side before she disengages fully.  "I've seen worse in my day," she assures him, "And I'm not above sitting on the floor."

She's making good on her claim as she speaks and he hastily bends to catch her by her elbows to stand her upright again.  "No, no, no, Mia, no.  I can't let you think I'm some uncivilized churl who makes his guests sit on the floor."

"You?  Uncivilized?"  She snakes a hand forward lightning-quick and snaps the band of his boxers.  "How could anyone come by such an outrageous notion?"

Sebastian squirms back a step, nearly crashing into the corner of the piano, hands raised in supplication.  "Okay, fair, I understand where you're coming from -- Give me two minutes to move some of this out of the way.  And then, if you'd like, you're invited to sit on furniture that was invented for sitting on."

"Aw, you're sweet," she says, with something of a playful bite.  "Regular knight in shining armor."  She advances as he retreats, until she's draped over the near end of the piano top and he's considering the logistics of the Jenga-esque situation with a weary eye.

Mia catcalls when he squats to heft one of the non-load-bearing boxes.  "And  _ I'm _ the uncivilized one," he grunts as he stands.  He gives her his best stink-eye as he passes, which is, in all honestly, more of a sly grin than anything else.  Dropping the box gently onto a flat-enough pile of unopened mail on the table, Sebastian turns to see Mia rifling through the open tops of the remaining boxes.

He freezes.  "Ah--"  The hands he's raised with the instinctive intent to pry her off the goods are recalled, wringing together apprehensively as he comes up behind her.  Mia blinks around at his chewed-off sentence, a plastic-sleeved 10-inch LP in her hands.  His eyes go to it, fingers curling tight around air with a restrained possessiveness.

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry," she sputters, holding out the record to him like it's a baby bear and he's the mama.  "You don't want me digging around in your stuff, I'm sure some of this must be priceless, right?  Here, I'll just…."

He doesn't take it from her.  Sebastian's chest swells and sinks with a quick, deep breath.  He licks his lips and a twitch of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.  He nods towards the turntable sitting beside the piano.  "Put it on."

She stalls, thumbing the protective plastic and studying the bold mustard-and-ketchup color scheme of the album art underneath it.  Sebastian puts a hand on her shoulder and ducks down to catch her eye.

"Or I can, if you want.  Either way, I think you'll like it.  It's a little different, but it's quality stuff."

Her eyes roll up to his and an impish grin unfurls across her face.  He straightens out of her way as she pushes boldly past him to the turntable, carefully sliding the record from the sleeve as she goes.  "I resent the implication that I may not know how to work a record player," she tells him, shooting a look over her shoulder.  "My aunt's collection included every original Broadway cast recording ever printed."

"Fair enough," Sebastian acknowledges.  Still, he watches the way she handles the vinyl disc by its edges, settling it over the spindle and flicking the switch to get it spinning, dropping the needle delicately on the outside rim.

Sonic scratching fills the room for the merest of seconds; then, the golden notes of a harp drop through the speaker into the room, landing on an dreamcloud of soft, angelic violins.  Mia's brow furrows, her head cocked, the thin press of her lips asking " _ where's the jazz? _ "  Sebastian meets her expectant eye and jogs his own eyebrows skyward in the same beat as the orchestra's sudden climb, and  _ there _ , like a cloudburst -- she laughs as a flurry of brassy notes tumble over each other, cutting through the saccharine strings with a candid, confident bluster.

"Charlie Parker," Sebastian explains, "A dream of his come true, recording with a string section."

"Ah!"  Mia's quick to catch on, holding up the album cover and indicating the title with a flourish.  " _ Charlie Parker with Strings _ ."

"He loved his heroin and he loved his chicken, good old Charlie Parker."  Sebastian sighs, hands on his hips, one foot on land and the other in a sea of nostalgia as the attention shifts from the alto sax to the strings and back again.  "That's how he got his nickname, you know.  Yardbird, Bird."

She purses her lips and blinks over at him, skeptical.  "They called him 'Bird' just because he loved chicken?"

"Well.  Yeah."  He shrugs. "I think 'Black Tar' would have been too on-the-nose."

"Okay, well that sounds slightly made up, but I can't judge.  Reminds me a little of the stories about how Bogie got his scar, and how they were probably all invented by the studio purely for drama's sake.  You know Bogie's infamous scar, don't you?"  She taps her lip as a reference point and he surprises a hiccup of laughter out of her when he slinks forward and kisses her on the spot.

"That's all people are, isn't it?" Sebastian asks, eyes bright.  "Stories that become myths that become legends."

She smiles up at him.  "I suppose so."

Mia puts her arms over his shoulders and entices him into a gentle sway in time to the music.  There's an oboe in the mix, and a piano, and Sebastian's fingers dance up and down her sides mimicking the pianist's flighty runs.  It's just the two of them, hidden away in the secret, shadowed den of his apartment, adrift from the strident rush of life that carries on without them beyond these four walls.

They drift together through the second track, a suitably dreamy ballad that ferries them back across the ages.  At the start of the third, a number with a touch more pep to it, Sebastian drops a kiss to her temple and takes her hand to spin her in place.

"I think I was supposed to be excavating a long-lost sofa," he says.  They both look over at the remaining tower of boxes and wince.

"It's really not that big of a deal," Mia starts to say, but the last half of her sentence is somewhat obfuscated by the swell of a sudden yawn.

He offers her a look of condolence.  "Caffeine's finally wearing off, eh?"

"Yikes," she gets out before another yawn stops her in her tracks.  "I'm crashing for sure.  Maybe I should just head ("No" - Sebastian, gently pulling on her hand) -- home?"

"No," he says again, sliding his other hand over hers and stepping backwards until the slight tension draws her forward.  "You're gonna drive how far in your condition just to hit the hay?  I have a bed right here."

She squints her eyes shut in amenable grin, shuffling after him towards the little bedroom off the little hall.  "Not that I want to argue with that logic," she says, "but now doesn't this make me the uncivilized … what word did you use?"

"Churl, I believe," he supplies helpfully, rounding the corner into his bedroom.

"The uncivilized churl who shows up out of the blue to make demands on your time only to immediately fall asleep and in your own bed no less?  Surely I was raised better than that."

Sebastian climbs backwards onto his unmade bed and she follows him down.  Settling together as near as can be comfortable in the airless swelter of the enclosed space, a moment passes where their world narrows to rustling fabric and creaking bedsprings and the unattended strains of Charlie Parker filtering in from the living room.

"What about old Yardbird?" Mia asks, snuggling into his pillow like it were her own.  Her eyes have already closed and they don't seem likely to open any time soon.

"Ah," Sebastian waves off any concern, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear once she's sufficiently nestled.  "He'll be here when you wake up.  And so will I."

**Author's Note:**

> You can listen to the cut of the album as referenced [ here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPuN0cOY-u4).


End file.
